And I thought Japanese kids had it worst!
According to a survey released last March 24, 2009 by the China Youth and Children Research Center (CYCRC), Chinese students had the longest study hours as compared to fellow high school students in Japan, the United States, and Korea.
After reading “The Myths of Japanese Quality” by Ray and Cindelyn Eberts, it was to my knowledge that cram schools are the most hell-like in the Land of the Rising Sun. Well, this survey definitely proved me wrong.
And especially with June as GaoKao (高考) month, the survey results could not have come out at a more opportune time.
Here are three facts about the China’s National College Entrance Examinations:
- GaoKao is equivalent to 2 days of silence (if you live near middle schools). The police will try their very best to control traffic so that the students will get to school on time and that car honks are minimized if not eradicated (at least for these 2 precious days).
Credit: Liuzhou Laowai
- Cheating is an annual occurence even if the penalty is the stiffest there is:
- Because of the high number of students taking the exam and its mortality rate, the test has been poetically described as “A thousand soldiers and ten thousand horses across a single log bridge.”
The GaoKao reminds me of the imperial examinations of China long ago. I first learned about it in (believe it or not) Raymond Wong’s “开心鬼 (Happy Ghost)” series where he played the un-reincarnated ghost of a Ching scholar who committed suicide because of numerous failed attempts at the examinations!
Back to the survey results, I think Chinese parents are becoming more and more “kiasu” or competitive. They enroll their children in various tuition classes and other extracurricular activities even when they are just starting school and still far off from taking the GaoKao!
The mentality these parents have is that “if we don’t enroll them in additional courses, they’ll get left behind by their peers.” But then kids should be kids. Forcing them to attend extra courses somehow distorts the natural learning curve.
The survey further said, “Moderate study pressure can better drive students to develop, however, too much will squeeze their development space, and can even cause harm to their physical and psychological health.”
Amen to that.
That said, sometimes I wonder if the oversensationalizing of the GaoKao is to blame.
For more great posts and information about China’s education system and the Gaokao, check out chinaSMACK’s recent and amusing Gaokao stress relief post or the wealth of great links provided in this recent weekly review. – Kai
I saw the slience sign when I passed a school yesterday and also saw many parents were standing outside of school until their children finish the exam. That was the main reason of blocked up the road. Yesterday Shanghai was very hot, I felt these parents were more suffering than their kids who were sitting in the exams.
I thought it is overreacting when I first passed by a high school after I came to Shanghai, founding so many parents were waiting outside the gate with anxious.
I felt so strange that people in the rural areas like my hometown don’t pay that kind of attention on this examination while the enroll rate there is much less than the huge cities.
Maybe much competitive atmosphere.
“That said, sometimes I wonder if the oversensationalizing of the GaoKao is to blame.”
There’s a great series of posts James Fallows has written over at The Atlantic about the GaoKao and how wrong (or not wrong) it is, on the off chance you haven’t seen it yet.
Still, having taught in China for a significant amount of time, I’m not terribly surprised at the study. My students definitely had it rough.
Maybe the US could learn something from this. Education is not a priority in American culture, why is the US always ranked around 30 in education for developed countries? Shouldn’t we be in the top ten at least? American popular culture and media definitely does not “hype” up test taking. LOL.
French, like Chinese, take the high school final exams very seriously. In France, we study for two years for the Bac and the two-weeks long series of exams is… not fun.
I’m not surprised to see Chinese students are stressed-out!
On the other side, I do feel that school (I’m talking before university here) in North America is a joke. I mean, all they seem to care about is the prom :lol: In France, we actually studied a lot…
If I was a parent in China and I had to pin all my hopes and dreams for the future on the single child that I’m allowed to have, then I would be super stressed and worried for my kid too.
It is ridiculous to say that Americans do not take education very seriously. In America, like in every country, there is a wide range of students. I attend a prestigious boarding school, where many students are accepted into the best universities in the world; please do not compare us to public school students or to what you see in American movies and television shows. Simply because we do not focus on the SAT and other standardized tests does not mean that we are not concerned with education. Rather, our focus on actually LEARNING instead of CRAMMING means that we graduate better thinkers than Chinese schools typically do.
I have studied Chinese for four years and stayed with a Chinese family in Beijing this summer. It pained me to listen to stories of what students go through with the gaokao. That test seems to suppress all creativity and the love of learning that my classmates and I develop here in America.
I think that was just a joke (from comment above).
I also agree that focusing on LEARNING instead of CRAMMING is important.
I agree with your point, even if i haven’t experienced prestigious american education, but i am taking IB Diploma education currently and i also have been adopted to Chinese education for 4 years, so i know the different focus of asian and western education system…. I think we really need to make some changes over such kinds of education, but there’s barely action taken in reality…. My fellows from america, china, and korea and I made this committee which fosters to come out with ideas to improve current education system such as one in china. Would you like to join us?
http://club.youtheca.com/club/futurehope
this is our committee website… we just made one these days.